Will The Real Fascists Please Stand Down

“Islamo-Fascism” as a talking point by first President Bush and now Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is a disingenuous use of a loaded denunciation.

Fascism as exemplified by Mussolini Italy and Franco Spain was a form of centralized totalitarian power exhibiting aggressive nationalism, strict state control of the population, extremist right-wing ideology, rabid anti-communism, and the strangle-hold of a military, corporate and religious confederacy.

The terrorists who threaten Americans are diffuse adherents to a stateless ideology whose most vexing feature is its ability to recreate itself in dislocated and independent cells operating on shoestring budgets. Fascism as a term can only refer to the centralized totalitarian power of nations. If neoconservatives want to label “men who despise freedom” as a “new type of fascism” then they must by definition be accusing those terrorists of being agents of a fascist state. Inasmuch as all real threats to American civilians since 9/11 have come from British citizens, maybe we should now consider invading England.

The neoconservatives who make up the Bush administration have succeeded in establishing a doctrine emphasizing national rather than international goals, the consolidation of executive power rather than the checks and balances of democracy, secrecy and domestic surveillance rather than the transparency of freedom, an alliance with an extreme religious right rather than the separation of church and state, and the complete ascendancy of the military-industrial complex in an aggressive war upon another country rich in resources.

Misdirecting censure by preemptively inveighing against others the very charge one seeks to evade …that’s an old trick.